


Guilt

by Anonymous



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ashe defects from blue lions au, Canon-Typical Violence, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loss of Faith, Pre-Gronder Dimitri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29541678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A semi-related collection of drabbles set in an AU where Ashe abandons the Blue Lions in Azure Moon.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert & Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Yuri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashe is brought back as a prisoner of war, but Yuri doesn't believe that Ashe has truly changed.

Yuri wishes, not for the first time, that he had tried to do something sooner. That he had tried to bring Ashe to Abyss when Yuri first suspected, he when first saw the signs. When Lonato died, when the war broke out. Before Ashe disappeared. But, Yuri waited. He waited and waited and waited until it was too late. 

Yuri and Ashe face each other across the war council room, much as they did in the Blue Lions classroom or across the training ground as students. 

Now, however, it is far different. They have only just returned from Ailell, with only one poor prisoner returned with then. Ashe, despite his pleasant and polite expression, is bound, his arms uselessly tied behind him, and Yuri is playing the part of judge. 

And possibly, he will be an executioner, should this go south. With the ravenous look in Dimitri's eye, he thinks it may. He prays to the Goddess, he prays and he hopes and he wonders if he's done enough, saved enough innocents, if the lives of those that he has killed does not cause an imbalance in the favors the higher powers might bestow upon him. 

Because surely, surely, after all Yuri has been though, he has earned something. Surely, something, someone on high looks at his tainted, pathetic soul and finds something wretched within him to pity. If not for him, then for Ashe. 

But maybe not. 

Or maybe that favor is not meant to be spent on Ashe now. 

Yuri remembers Ashe as a child, the sweet boy who was shy to speak to Yuri when they first met. He remembers him as a student, remembers all the talks and discussions they shared, on nobility, on their pasts, remembers his determination for knighthood, his passion for justice. 

That sweetness has turned bitter, the determination into venomous ambition. The passion has all but rotted like the violets Ashe left behind in the greenhouse. 

"I see not why we waste precious time on this rat," Dimitri murmers as the first words he's said to his dear friend and past classmate in five years. The first words after the clamoring demands for Ashe's head and blood, of course. 

Ashe, the fool, simply shrugs. His eyes are dark, the sparkling forest green now dead and wilted into something else, something dark and almost sinister. Yet his smile never drops. 

"I don't much see the point, either. The Church certainly didn't take the time to consider my brother, or Lonato, or any of those it has executed in the name of the Goddess, in the name of righteousness. Why spare me, a silly commoner. I have no Crest. I have no power, no connections." 

Byleth bites her lip. "You're you. You're Ashe. That's what you have. What happened to the sweet, enthusiastic boy in my class?" 

Ashe's eyes chill to stark coldness, iced and full of fury. The pleasant smile clings helplessly. "He died. Little by little. First, his parents died and he was abandoned, chased and berated on the streets by the very soldiers meant to protect him. Then his second family was taken from him, Christophe as the first chapter, and Lonato the second in this drama the Church has handwritten. What's the third, I wonder? Me? My little siblings? What crimes will the Church find them guilty of, I wonder, once I'm dead? Surely the Church will go for a full sweep." 

"We don't kill innocents, unlike your Emperor," Dimitri snarls, "Only the wretched will face their punishment." 

"She's not my Emperor," Ashe mumbles so quietly Yuri can barely hear, but hear he does, though he can't seem to comprehend the words.   
"Dear, sweet Silver," he starts, adding an extra smooth layer of silk over his voice, something to try and cover the barbs of Ashe’s words, to try and turn the wrath of Dimitri away from him. A shield to protect him. "If she's not your Emperor, why do you fight for her?" 

"It's not that I fight for her," says Ashe, his eyes trained on Yuri. "I disagree with her methods, but her reasoning... Rather, I fight against the Church. Your Highness— Dimitri. You've seen what the Church has done. Why do you fight for them?" 

Dimitri remains wordless, answering only with a growl. Ashe has boxed him in. Dimitri wishes to end Edelgard, end the Empire. But to fight for the Church specifically... 

The unspoken words hang heavily, their heretical weight shackled to the leaders' ankles, a guilt that neither nor Dimitri nor Byleth have confronted yet. 

They use the Church's strength, yet they fight not for it. What happens, then, if they win this war with the aid of the Church? Will history repeat itself? If they win, and try to reform the Church... 

But what about those the Church has already hurt? They are owed something. If the Church cared at all... 

Does the Goddess care at all? For any of them? 

For Ashe, Hapi, so many in Abyss. For Yuri himself. 

Ashe's eyes are on Yuri, admitting something, asking something. Not quite a plea, but not a demand. A wish or a hope, maybe. 

"Ashe, please. Come back. Fight for us," Byleth begs, actually begs, her tone pleading, her eyes huge, tearful. 

"I only fight for two people, and as long as they are safe, I don't care what happens to me. But I will never sell myself nor my beliefs to the Church again." The look he gives her is obstinate, hopeful for nothing. 

"There's nothing I can do to convince you?" She asks with a heavy sigh. It's more resigned statement than question, yet Ashe answers anyway. 

"No." 

\--- 

Yuri finds Ashe later in the dungeon. There's a direct passageway to Abyss. Yuri can't imagine that this is an accident. 

"Hey there, kid," Yuri says, standing across the bars. Ashe sits, leanded against the wall, one leg pulled up, his arm propped against it. He regards Yuri with a lazy tilt of his head, a bored look on his face. 

"Oh. Hey. Come to kill me already?" He asks, concern lacking totally from his voice. 

Yuri stares him down, feels his brows knit themselves with frustrated incomprehension. 

"You really aren't worried about your siblings?" 

"Of fucking course I am, Yuri. I'm scared to death to leave them alone. I'm all they have left." He tilts his head back against the stone wall again. Huffs a sigh. "But fuck me, and fuck the Church too, if I ever abandon my sense of right and wrong again." 

Yuri regards him. "No more dreams of Loog, hmm?" 

"Loog wouldn't have killed his father simply because he was ordered to," Ashe answers flatly. "I lost my chance for those dreams long ago. And now my siblings may still suffer because of me." His voice breaks on the last word, and he turns his face the other way, though he can't entirely stifle the sniffle. 

Goddess damn it, Yuri knew it. Knew that Ashe wasn't totally gone. Knew that deep down, behind whatever bravado he was putting up now, Ashe still had a piece of himself. And that part of him is terrified. 

Yuri would have never bet money on hearing those words come from Ashe's mouth, yet here they are, in Ashe’s prison with his heretical words, mourning his dreams, his future that he had stolen from fate's grasp that night he met Lonato. 

A lost soul, someone who needs to be saved. 

Yuri's favorite kind of person. 

Ashe doesn't look up again until the door falls open with a loud clank. He looks up at Yuri, his eyes red and puffy, and Yuri nearly squirms uncomfortably at the reverence with which Ashe looks at him. 

"Where are your siblings?" Yuri asks. 

Ashe waves lazily, a vague, broad gesture. "Gaspard. In a Church, if you can believe it." 

"We'll go get them," says Yuri, "and the three of you will come back here." 

Ashe shakes his head. "I told you, I refuse to fight for the Church." 

Yuri walks to him, kneels on one knee next to him. "Do you think Abyss fights for the Church? We fight for ourselves down here. Ourselves, and anyone else we care about." 

Ashe's eyes rove over Yuri's face, trying to find an answer, a deeper meaning. He must see something, because his smile this time is real, is true. The one that Yuri had always seen before, when he and Ashe would sneak away to the hidden places of the monastery, Abyss. Anywhere they could spend a moment to speak, to reminisce. Safe from the prying eyes of the noble population, who would judge a pair of street-rats and the burgeoning friendship. 

"Why would you help me?" Ashe asks. "What if I return to the opposing army? What if we meet each other in battle again?" 

"When we reunited all those years ago, in Abyss that first time you came, you told me you would bring me home. But Abyss is my home. Could it be yours, too?" 

Ashe doesn't answer, and Yuri stands, reaching down to him. 

A long moment passes where Ashe just stares, stares, stares. Yuri can almost taste what he's thinking: a bitter feeling that everything that happened before could happen again. Sour regrets. Yuri could be chapter three in the woeful tale of Ashe's life. 

But Yuri would be damned if he let that happen. 

Ashe takes his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I kind of want to play with this AU more. Maybe another time


	2. Byleth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth finds Ashe in Abyss and wonders just how much has actually changed.

“Do not come any closer, Professor,” comes Ashe’s voice, cool and hard. Two youths stand behind him, silver hair and green eyes so similar to Ashe’s own that they could only be his younger siblings. He gestures with his head, eyes trained on Byleth and simple dagger in hand, and they scamper away, down a passage that Byleth hadn’t even noticed until they were gone.

Byleth should have expected to run into Ashe down here after realizing he escaped. The first time they had stumbled into Abyss those five years ago, she had clearly seen the glint in his eyes. The innate desire to be around those like him, who felt as he did so soon after Lonato’s death. Despair, distrust of the Church, without a home or familiar to return to.

Bringing him so soon to this place was her mistake. Not her only one when it comes to Ashe, but one of the more easily avoided ones. She knew Ashe, as a student, had struggled to fit in, had found friendship in his class but still was scores away from being like any of them. Seeking to help him, she gave him far more training than the others, far more responsibilities on missions. At the time, he seemed to have enjoyed it, reveled in the idea of duty.

She wonders how much her actions affected the weary, battle worn man she sees before her now.

She wonders if anything of her student is left.

That look on his eye has changed. Whereas before they always sparkled with optimism, a deep-rooted joy that seemed to be wound into Ashe’s very core, now there is only a jaded gleam. They've caught spark from the fires of war, flared into a burning fire, the fresh leaf green has charred into an obscure, dark wall of smoke. She doesn't avert her eyes from his gaze, the light from his younger days smoldering with a plume of smoke within them. She doesn't flinch nor tense. His eyes rove her face, watch her carefully, every muscle pulled tight like a spring.

They are in the Ashen Wolves classroom. He is aptly named for such a class, she thinks with a distant, flickering thought. She wonders how he might have turned out had he found himself here from the start. Away from her, he might have been safer. She isn't sure. Maybe things would have ended the same, with them facing each other across the fires of Ailell. If she had never taken over the Blue Lions class, how much would have changed? Would she have ruined another life in place of his?

She can't focus on this right now, not with Ashe’s dangerous focus on her. His aim has always been sharp and true, and even if the weapon he holds now isn't his usual one, she doesn't want to take the chance.

"So, this is where you went," she says as she draws sparkling glyphs of magic to her fingers. Ashe tenses but doesn't move forward towards her. The dagger stays ready to strike.

"You've caught me again," he says coolly, his polite tone tinged with something bitter and frozen— a tone she expects from Yuri when facing down a foe, not Ashe. She doesn't know what to expect from Ashe now. "Want to drag me back up there? Try and beg for my life again? You know what will happen. The Church will want to lop my head off, just like my father, just like my brother. Maybe Dimitri will stick it on a pike. Maybe you can decorate the chapel with it— that would certainly draw more interest from the good and holy than a boy crying for the father he helped murder. Goddess knows no one paid him a lick of attention while he was still so small and innocent. Maybe they’ll care more for his severed head."   
  


"Ashe, please, what can I do to fix this?" Byleth tries, but she feels foolish when Ashe's glare darkens, bringing the room into a deeper murkiness.

"I'm tired. Of this war, of the Church. And I'm _frightened_ out of my fucking mind. Who isn't?" he says with a chuckle that is almost, almost like his old ones, and Byleth's heart would have stopped had it ever started to begin with, “There is no fixing it.” His face relaxes with a cold mirth, the cutting contrast of his words and expression causing Byleth a pain that no healers magic could reach. “The Church deserves to burn.”

He says as much, but his expression twitches with the words and his grip on his dagger loosens just a hair. Something isn’t adding up.

"When you were younger," she tries again, "you believed in justice, in chivalry, in friendship. You paid for a man's stolen goods simply to ease a stranger's suffering!" Her voice breaks, and Ashe's eyes widen.

"And I still believe in all that, despite how it may seem. But the Church _doesn't care._ That's all," he sighs, and finally he lowers his weapon. "You're not going to try and take me back, are you? Because I swear, I will fight back harder this time."

If Dimitri found out that she is letting Ashe free again after finding him, he may end her himself. But if she takes Ashe back, Dimitri will definitely end him. A traitor to his cause. "No. I'm glad to see you here and safe, though I will be having a word with Yuri about releasing prisoners."

His laugh this time is completely genuine. "Don't go to hard on him." The dagger is gone now, tucked into its hidden sheath beneath Ashe's cloak. He wraps his arms around himself instead.

"When can I ever?" She huffs, "he knows how to push all of our buttons too well. Yours, too, apparently." Ashe flushes, and it is so normal, so much like the sweet seventeen-year-old she remembers that she must blink away the image of the smaller boy to see the man before her now. It doesn't at all fit the situation, yet Byleth feels herself relaxing at the sight.

"Professor. Byleth. I’m sorry for this. I’m sorry for putting you in a difficult situation. I don't know that I've ever told you how much I appreciated everything you did for me, back then."

Byleth blinks back her surprise and shakes her head. "I didn't do _enough._ I will never be able to do enough to make up for everything that happened."

Ashe's sigh is weighted, full of everything he's been carrying for years and years, beyond his Academy days, heavy enough to drag them both to the depths if they hadn't been there already. "You've done more than the Church. Far more. I owe you a debt. But I will never be able to fight for the Church, and if you ask me to, I... I'll have to decline. Respectfully."

Byleth's head is spinning from how quickly Ashe's attitude has changed, and she wonders just how much the cold demeanor he carried before was just the front of an angry boy. Angry, and scared out of his mind. She stares him down, assessing him until he's fidgeting with discomfort, a habit he's yet to bury in the past five years. "I'll never ask you to. Not again. But if I know you, I know you won't hide in darkness while people are suffering. So, Ashe. If you're not going to fight for the Empire, and you're not going to fight for the Church, then who are you fighting for?"

Ashe's eyes glimmer with a bright flare of heat, determination and rage and despair all mixed into the forest green, lost in the inky depths. "For my siblings, always. Now, for Abyss, and someday, for the people once more. And maybe, just a little, for myself."  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has become the drabble collection I work on when I'm sad ahaha
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
